The Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act (H.R. 1695), which would make the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee, cleared its first legislative hurdle last week, passing the House Judiciary Committee by a 27-1 vote, less than a week after...

The Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden names the U.S. Poet Laureate and decides the winner of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. She also can appoint the US Register of Copyrights. At least for now. On March 23, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte...

With Brexit looming over the London Book Fair a week ago, the watchword among publishers was “uncertainty.” A terror attack this week under the shadow of Big Ben has shaken the world and added a new level of concern about the future. On Wednesday in the British...

The political world – or at least the part of it that includes the United States and Europe – may be roiling with chaos. But at the London Book Fair this week, publishers welcomed the pandemonium. Attendance was up for LBF 2017, organizers announced cheerily. Local...

One of the industry’s pioneering e-book publishers has announced that she is stepping down as chairman and executive publisher of the company she co-founded in 2009. While Jane Friedman – previously, CEO at Harper Collins – steps away from Open Road Integrated Media,...

US presidents appear on coins and currency, from pennies to fifties. And when they leave office, presidents often become coin collectors too. This week, Penguin Random House announced that Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama have signed deals for memoirs, with...

So far in 2017, the biggest book of the year is one that hasn’t yet been published. The political memoir “Dangerous” crashed into a wall on Monday when Simon & Schuster announced it was pulling away from its deal with the Breitbart firebrand Milo Yiannopolous. If...

Whether physical or virtual, a library is the nursery of democracy and its shelves are the embodiment of free expression. In the Age of Trump, many librarians take their jobs more seriously than ever. Immediately after the November 2016 U.S. election, reports Andrew...

With the information world long since moved online, today’s librarians may worry more about broadband than bookshelves. The shift to digital in our nation’s libraries means close attention to private Internet service providers as well as public regulators from groups...